NYT ombud: Trust us, we’re unbiased

posted at 9:21 am on April 23, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

With a tough presidential election on the horizon, media outlets relish the demand that the battle will bring for news and feature coverage. In order to get those readers, though, the media outlets have to be perceived as reliable and trustworthy. That brings us to a rather humorous column from the New York Times’ public editor — their version of an ombudsman — Arthur Brisbane, in which he addresses the disparity in scrutiny of Mitt Romney over the sitting President in recent Gray Lady coverage. Brisbane criticized his paper four weeks ago for an over-the-top slam of an investment by the blind trust set up for Ann Romney, and apparently that’s part of his argument that the Times will provide fair coverage of the upcoming general election — despite the suck-up coverage given Barack Obama in his first term.

No … really:

According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Writing for the periodical Politics & Policy, the authors were so struck by the findings that they wondered, “Did The Times, perhaps in response to the aggressive efforts by Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal to seize market share, decide to tilt more to the left than it had in the past?”

I strongly doubt that. Based on conversations with Times reporters and editors who cover the campaign and Washington, I think they see themselves as aggressive journalists who don’t play favorites. Still, a strong current of skepticism holds that the paper skews left. Unfortunately, this is exacerbated by collateral factors — for example, political views that creep into nonpolitical coverage.

To illustrate, Faye Farrington, a reader from Hollis, N.H., wrote me earlier this year in exasperation over a Sunday magazine article about “Downton Abbey,” the public television series, in which the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code.

“The constant insertion of liberal politics into even the most politically irrelevant articles has already caused us to cancel our daily subscription,” Ms. Farrington wrote, “leaving only the Sunday delivery as I confess to an addiction to the Sunday crossword.”

The warm afterglow of Mr. Obama’s election, the collateral effects of liberal-minded feature writers — these can be overcome by hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting now.

Stop it — you’re killing me, Arthur! Seriously, I can’t quite catch my breath from laughing out loud. Brisbane gives us two of the most obvious cases of bias and says that this editorializing can be overcome by trusting the same people not to editorialize in news stories in the next six months. One can imagine Lucy telling Charlie Brown much the same thing right before pulling the football away for the 50th year in a row.

The story on Ann Romney’s blind trust is one good data point that shows the problem doesn’t just lie with “liberal-minded feature writers.” By definition, a blind trust keeps the owner from making or even knowing of the financial decisions made by the trustees. Ann Romney isn’t the candidate. How, then, is this a news story in the presidential race? Mitt Romney cut his ties to Bain in 1999, long before the company invested in the Chinese company in question. Ann Romney’s blind trust has a “relatively small stake” in Bain Capital Asia fund in question, and she didn’t direct the purchase. Furthermore, the trustees bought the stake before the fund invested in Uniview. Does this tell us anything about Ann Romney, let alone Mitt Romney? Of course not. But the Times certainly didn’t mind tying both of them to Chinese surveillance. Spooky! Who gave that story the green light? The editors, that’s who, not “liberal-minded feature writers.”

The Times also went after McCain for his medical records in May, which he released as planned anyway. What really went on in that incident? The McCain campaign excluded them from a media pool during the release of the records, no doubt for payback on their Iseman smear. The NYT then threatened to write negative editorials about his medical records if they were not added to the pool, which they did when the McCain campaign refused to knuckle under to their extortion threat. The “hard-nosed, unbiased political reporting” that followed included two separate articles whining about their exclusion from the rather large pool at the McCain event.

So forgive us for laughing at you, Arthur. You gave it the ol’ college try, but after watching the Times at work four years ago — and before and since then, too — we’re not about to trust the Gray Lady in 2012 to behave responsibly.

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Does anyone actually believe in the New York Times anymore? They’ve always had a liberal bias, but at least during the days of Safire & Baker, you could expect they’d get most facts generally correct. Now, I trust them about as much as I trust NBC, i.e., not at all.

According to a study by the media scholars Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Forget favorable or unfavorable. How about the $hit just out and out ignored.

The Times’s coverage of the president’s first year in office was significantly more favorable than its first-year coverage of three predecessors who also brought a new party to power in the White House

You have to be a liberal hence the reason why you make so much sense on this topic.

Of course it’s just a sideshow, since it’s liberals battling liberals and neither side will learn an iota from this. The Times’ journalists will simply pine for a publisher even more liberal than Pinch who would turn the paper into a worker-owned co-op, while Pinch and the others in the leadership will see nothing hypocritical about bashing their own union and denying them benefits because the paper can’t afford it, and their support for other private and public sector unions in battles against business and government that can’t afford those benefit demands, either.

Brisbane did mention the Iseman incident through comments by Kathleen Hall Jamieson: Among other things, she said, “Don’t play a sex scandal out when you don’t have any evidence,” a reference to The Times’s controversial 2008 article on John McCain’s relationship with a lobbyist. Too bad he couldn’t bring himself as “public editor” to weigh in on the Time’s editorial corruption in that case.

the writer slipped in a veiled complaint about Mitt Romney’s exploitation of the American tax code

Even in a piece claiming to be unbaised, Mr. Brisbane cannot resist the urge to take a potshot at a GOP candidate, using the time-honored liberal tactic of loosely “quoting” somebody else, so as to avoid responsibility for the use of the “quoted” words.

according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, . . . the Wall Street Journal at number one with 2,092,523 copies sold daily (up 0.5% from the previous year, . . .); . . . and The New York Times is third with a circulation of 951,063 (down 8.47% from the previous year).

I can imagine the smug condescension of NYT editors reading these comments, assuring themselves that a bunch of gun-toting cousin-humping wingnuts can’t possibly have anything valid to say about their sacred product. In the meantime, their paper sheds credibility and readers like a mangy dog sheds hair.

The New York Times has richly earned its impending bankruptcy, and I intend to hoist a cold one to it when that happens.

“New York Times staffers, like suffering proles all over the world, belong to a labor union, and over the years the union has negotiated a very comfy defined benefit retirement plan. The staffers love the plan.

But economic reality is intruding. Times management, perhaps reading the coverage in its own pages about the companies and cities going bankrupt due to unsustainable union-bargained pension systems, wants to make a change. It wants to offer a defined contribution plan, instead. Workers and the company pay into a 401(k) plan, workers invest it, and when they retire, that is the amount they have towards their income.”

Shouldn’t that column be in the Lost & Found ads? “Lost. Enormous amount of trust. Last seen vicinity of WWII. No reward.”.

Finbar on April 23, 2012 at 10:00 AM

I think they lost it before WWII, when one of their “Journalists” won the Putzler Prize for his piece on Soviet Russia where he claimed that the Gulags didn’t really exist and Uncle Joe was really a swell guy.

The NYT is a joke, but it is a joke that panders to its base. Look at the article Drudge just cited about Obama wanting to do more without Congress.

Clearly, he campaigned against that, and if Bush were doing it, the NYT would be 100% against it. However, read the comments of their readers and you will see why they continue to be biased.

To summarize, their readers believe (and the truth):

1. The Republican Congress has done nothing (the Republican House has actually passed a lot of legislation, greater than the historical average, while the Democrat Senate has been one of the least active Senates in history).
2. Republicans main goal is to make Obama look bad (while partially true, as mentioned the Repbulican House has come up with ideas – all rejected by the President. And if the shoe was on the other foot, Democrats would be doing the exact same thing).
3. Obama has to go at it alone because he is doing the work of the people (in the last election, his agenda was flatly rejected, and if polls are an indication, few want what he is selling).
4. It is okay to do something he campaigned against because it is right (Principals matter).

Literally, 95% of the comments expressed a combination of those incorrect assumptions. And those are their readers. So, why would the NYT even contemplate trying to be neutral and risk losing the base that they have?

???! Gimme a break. Since the coming of the Ochs-Hays-Sulzberger clan, The Times has always been aggressively liberal in its viewpoint and coverage — it is just that since Sonny Boy (Pinch) took over it has become crudely blatant in its prejudices, and more contemptuous of the facts. Once magisterial — that is, soothingly pompous and boring — it has now developed a style that is like being beaten over the head with a propaganda pamphlet from the Leninist Workers Action Committee.

The very fact that the NYT had Duranty at their Moscow bureau in the first place says to me that they were always enamored with and gave under-the-radar credence to totalitarian ideals wherever they found them.

It hasn’t been acceptable until Obama’s election for them to come out of the closet with their views, but anyone who has been paying attention already knows who and what they are: enemies of American ideals.

Read your post,.. It’s almost frightening, that they are this disconnected from what the public actually thinks about anything these days.

Like almost every liberal I have ever met, they simply cannot process, that an opposing viewpoint not only exists, but can have merit.

Notice almost every media report on the Obamacare debacle, swallowed the democrat lie whole, that the GOP had NO ideas of it’s own… when there were reams of plans out there which the GOP had offered.. they walked past the table groaning under the weight of those alternatives and just scanned their faces around.. seemingly seeing nothing.. before throwing their hands up and walking away.

and the public sees this..

and they can’t understand why nobody believes them anymore? Why they have less credibility than a third rate used car salesman?….

Great new headline about the Times. It’s no wonder the paper is ridiculed as being the New York Slimes, because its editors and reporters seem to take great delight in sliming American conservatives, or anyone who does not buy into their biased reporting. I, for one, refuse to read it anymore, not even its food pages!!! Well, maybe I can find a good recipe there for dog meat…

That NYT they are so funny! I can see why their readership raises due to their unbias and truthful news. OH… they are losing readership. NYT has lost any credablity with the American public. The only use for their paper is for the dog pen. Truthful BS.

I mentioned this in the last Times thread, but this article really drives the point home for me.

Something is going on at NYT. Somebody – Pinch, Kruggy, a reporter, whoever – got word from an inside White House source beyond the trendlines, and everything since reeks of proactive damage control.

If they paint a rosy picture and the MSM carries their water, but the economy still tanks, the carriers will be on the hook to answer to the gen-pop as to why they’re covering Barry’s ass when people’s lives are getting destroyed.

Brooks is writing coded op/ed’s that are saying, “hey, I just got hammered by the Obama Team for being somewhat critical. So I’m just going to write what they want me to, and tell you that explicitly. This way, they stop yelling at me, and maybe you can read between the lines”.

Now you have this guy saying, “well, yeah, our op/ed’s are Pro-Barry, and it does creep into every aspect of the paper, but I’m on it, and will harshly criticize afterwards. So nothing to worry about”.

We had a NYT/CBS poll that showed things even, thereby killing the CNN and ABC polls, to the point where even Stephanopolous called his own ABC poll “an outlier” yesterday and that things were dead-even.

Between this and the National Journal “In Nothing We Trust” piece that pretty much confirmed every philosophical Beck’s been making for five years… I’m no Allah, but dude, I’m getting concerned.

Sometimes it helps being psychotic, you don’t have to question yourself, a sort of Napolean complex gets you through the day, a self constructed dream world keeps you content. Then the lies come easily.

I don’t know what is worse, this pathetic article or the NYT comments section on this article. It’s obvious that the NYT is preaching to it’s choir and to them alone. This bunch of self-deluded leftists wouldn’t recognize bias if it slapped them upside their heads with an Obama 2012 poster! The NYT must be on the verge of shutting down to even put this pitiful article out there. Get ready for them declaring bankruptcy in the next weeks. They would only be doing this if they knew they were in their death throws. The latest circulation statistics must have just arrived on the editors desk and the news must be grim.

On November 14, 2001, in The New York Times’ 150th anniversary issue, former executive editor Max Frankel wrote that before and during World War II, the Times had maintained a consistent policy to minimize reports on the Holocaust in their news pages.[94] Laurel Leff, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, concluded that the newspaper had downplayed the Third Reich targeting of Jews for genocide. Her 2005 book “Buried by the Times” documents the NYT’s tendency before, during and after World War II to place deep inside its daily editions the news stories about the ongoing persecution and extermination of Jews, while obscuring in those stories the special impact of the Nazis’ crimes on Jews in particular.

I’ve always been a little wary over Fox News feeling it has to tout itself as “fair and balanced” bcuz I think actions speak louder than words and so I can unequivocally say that this NYT puff piece makes me absolutely wanna puke. And I can’t wait to hear how the Fox talkers cover this one tonight.

“The constant insertion of liberal politics into even the most politically irrelevant articles has already caused us to cancel our daily subscription,” Ms. Farrington wrote, “leaving only the Sunday delivery as I confess to an addiction to the Sunday crossword.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. Get.A.Life.

Maybe that stupid puzzle was the hottest thing going in the 1970’s, but there have been a gazillion other puzzles/games to come along since then. If the NYT crossword is an integral part of her life, she must lead a truly empty life.

The death of journalism’s integrity, if there ever was any, has been the New York Times. They are the hearse of journalism’s funeral and the Sulzbergers are the pallbearers. Little Artie Sulzberger is a compulsive lying narcissist and nothing else.

So forgive us for laughing at you, Arthur. You gave it the ol’ college try leftist partisan hack try, but after watching the Times at work four years ago — and before and since then, too — we’re not about to trust the Gray Lady in 2012 to behave responsibly.

FIFY (But a college try and a leftist partisan hack try probably is the same thing.)

You’re right,.. kind of like if you have to tell everyone just how smart you are, chances are, you’re a pretty dim bulb.

mark81150 on April 23, 2012 at 11:27 AM

Like most of our “favorite” libtard trolls here in HA?

And likewise be careful around the person who says things like “I’m just a dumb farmboy from Iowa, so you’ll have ta splain it to me” – cuz he’s just giving you an opening and enough rope to hang yourself with – cuz he ain’t as dumb as he says. I used to work with a Navy Captain like that. When some arrogant civil service (or MITRE FFRDC) weenie from Massachusetts would start in, he’d give that line and then sit back and wait for the right time to set the hook – and always made the other guy look like an absolute idiot by the time he was done reeling him in.